“No, no, Giles!” she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back from the door. “I am passing by—and I have called on you—I won’t enter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout way to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there—but I cannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a little way! Don’t condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to come to you because—I have no other help here. Three months ago you were my lover; now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, and forbidden what we thought of. It must not be. But we can act honestly, and yet you can be my friend for one little hour? I have no other—”
She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an effort of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob. Winterborne took her other hand. “What has happened?” he said.
“He has come.”
There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, “You mean this, Grace—that I am to help you to get away?”
“Yes,” said she. “Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right. I have said to myself I can trust you.”
Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery—if it could be called such—earlier in the summer, when they met for the last time as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out that reproach from his conscience. “I’ll come at once,” he said. “I’ll light a lantern.”
He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford such self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, and they started.
CHAPTER XLI.
The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily.
“This is awkward,” said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern.